Casual golf fans, listen up. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The Netflix sports doco mini series, “Full Swing” – it’s Hollywood. Not truly representative of the world of professional golf.

The private jets, the ga-billion dollar Florida mansions, the super yachts in the Bahamas, the meetings with clothing manufacturers to decide the colour of the outfits they’re going to pay their brand ambassadors millions to wear, while they’re playing in front of crowds 12 deep, week in week out…that’s not really how most professional golfers live. Perhaps .00025% of them – Woods, Rahm, Spieth, Scheffler, Thomas, Scott and a few dozen others. But the balance? Pffffft. A disproportionate share of golf pros have never been on television, let alone a Gulfstream jet.

Make no mistake, for the overwhelming majority, professional golf is a long, lonely, gut-wrenching grind, a searching test of character that only the truly hardy pass, but even fewer prosper.
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All of which makes the story of battling Brisbane pro Michael Wright, Official World Golf Ranking 1300 (plus) utterly compelling. (1300 is a round figure – officials typically stop counting by the time they get to Wright’s standing in the game)

For 24 years, the affable Wright has slogged it out on what’s left of the Australian golf tour, with little to show for the well-worn grooves on his wedges, the blisters on his hands and the sun spots on the back of his neck.

A handful of second tier tournament victories, supplemented by a bunch of less than lucrative top 10 finishes have accounted for the bulk of his very modest career earnings.

Even in the “good times”, Wright only just covered expenses – that’s even avoiding the cost of hotel rooms. Any time Wright travelled to play intrastate, interstate or overseas, he had the humility to call ahead and organise to be billeted. Sleep on a stranger’s floor – anything he could do to preserve his “fighting fund”.

In 2013, while Adam Scott was running away with the Australian PGA title on the Gold Coast, after winning the US Masters in Augusta, Michael Wright was doing what Michael Wright does best – finishing an anonymous 18th, covering his expenses, but hardly advancing his financial security.

In between tournaments and pro-ams, intermittent work as a relief school teacher was necessary for Wright to make ends meet and support his family – wife Jo and two teenage sons, Noah and Charlie.

However, in anticipation of 50th birthday in February next year, he thought he’d have one good crack at qualifying for the uber rich US Champions tour where weekly, the tournament prizemoney exceeds his total career earnings by a multiple of 10.

Remarkably, against all odds and expectations, Wright earned his card, one of just five out of thousands of well credentialled, multi-million dollar earning US professionals to advance.

But that’s just the headline – the true beauty of the story is buried in the detail.

Just when Wright once again, looked destined to fall agonisingly short, he holed out for birdie from 112m on the final hole at Soboba Golf Course in San Jacinto, California to miraculously secure his playing rights.

“Perhaps it was just meant to be, who knows,” an ebullient Wright said this week upon his return home. “Call it lucky if you like, but that shot’s been 25 years in the making. I can tell you, there’s been a hell of a lot of dirt dug for that ball to finish up in the hole!”

The realisation that he’d finally achieved his dream and earned a start on the impossibly rich “seniors” tour was met with a mix of disbelief, relief and delight.

Well placed but far from assured of a spot going into the fourth and final round, Wright instructed his caddy, Brisbane mate Guy Elliott not to reveal where he sat on the leader board. The guy carrying the clubs was allowed to know, but the guy hitting the shots didn’t want to.

“When the ball disappeared into the hole, Guy just started yelling, “you’re in, you’re in, you’ve done it,” Wright recalled gleefully. “It took a while to sink in. After all the emotional pain and heart ache the game of golf is capable of serving up, it’s hard to describe that feeling of elation when the reward finally arrives. It’s surreal.”

Through two stages of qualifying, Wright was pitted against hundreds and hundreds of guys who’d played for years (and earned millions) on the USPGA tour, the unquestioned pinnacle of world golf.

Wright, who grew up and learned his trade in Brisbane’s bayside suburbs, was listed in the draw as playing just two – the two British Opens he qualified for back in 2006 and 2009 – up until now, the joint highlight of his 24 year-long grind.

That’s significant – the pinnacle for most pros is not winning a major, it’s just making it into the field, earning yourself the right to blow $5000 in expenses, by just teeing it up.

Tough game, golf.

“I’m one of the last of my contemporaries still playing professionally,” he conceded. “The rest were smart enough to give it up long ago. And perhaps at some level, that’s contributed to me qualifying. At the elite level, golf’s not a game you can quit and come back to six years later, hoping to be just as sharp. It’s just too bloody hard for that! Against my better judgement, I’ve played right through my 40s, so I haven’t had to scrape off the rust.”

In terms of capitalising on his unique opportunity, the hard work of course is yet to begin. The climb up the cliff face commences in February, when he returns to the US to officially launch his PGA champions tour career.

He’s not burdening himself with “expectations” – he prefers to focus instead on “standards”, standards that he admits have eluded him far too frequently across the course of his career.

But who knows? – maybe now is his time. Anybody familiar with the “golfing Gods” would also know they have a bizarre sense of humour.

Michael Wright, on the strength of his unyielding dedication and determination, might yet have the last laugh.

Heaven knows, he’s earned it.